Pri­mary: Chil­dren back at their own desks af­ter four months of work to clean up school

I’d like to thank Tul­lial­lan staff, pupils and par­ents for al­low­ing us to share their school all this time and other schools who do­nated equip­ment

Pupils of a fire-hit pri­mary school have re­turned to their own desks for the first time since the dev­as­tat­ing blaze in De­cem­ber.

Young­sters and staff were forced to flee Cair­ney­hill Pri­mary on the af­ter­noon of De­cem­ber 8 when flames ripped through part of the build­ing.

They were re­lo­cated to Tul­lial­lan Pri­mary while a clean-up and par­tial de­mo­li­tion was car­ried out.

The fire was caused by a sus­pected fault in the school’s elec­tri­cal sys­tem.

The tire­less work of coun­cil staff meant the school and nurs­ery were able to re­turn to nor­mal as schools across the re­gion went back af­ter the Easter break.

Fur­ther work is needed to re­build the rear of the school, which houses the ju­nior sec­tion, and some chil­dren are be­ing taught in tem­po­rary ac­com­mo­da­tion in the mean­time.

Head teacher Fiona Hall said: “We are all so glad to be back.

“It was lovely to see the chil­dren’s faces light up as they came back to­day.

“Our hosts for the last four months at Tul­lial­lan have been so ac­com­mo­dat­ing and made us feel so wel­come.

“I can’t thank them enough but this is our school and it is so good to be back.”

Ms Hall praised the sup­port given to the school from a va­ri­ety of peo­ple, both within and out­with the coun­cil.

“I want to thank ev­ery­one who stepped in to help over the last few months, staff who have gone over and above to make sure ev­ery­thing was ready for us to­day,” she said.

“Es­pe­cially, I’d like to thank Tul­lial­lan staff, pupils and par­ents for al­low­ing us to share their school all this time and other schools who do­nated equip­ment to use fol­low­ing the fire, but also the wider com­mu­nity and the fam­i­lies who have sup­ported us through­out this dif­fi­cult pe­riod.

“Al­though the fire was dev­as­tat­ing for the school, the warmth and kind­ness of all those who stepped in to of­fer help made it all so much eas­ier.

“I also want to thank my amazing staff team again for their care, calm­ness, sup­port and pro­fes­sion­al­ism and my amazing chil­dren who I al­ways say are the best...be­cause they are!”

The pre-Christ­mas blaze prompted fire safety con­cerns af­ter it emerged a se­cu­rity alarm and not a fire alarm alerted staff.

It was later re­vealed that one in four Fife schools do not have smoke de­tec­tors.

Pic­ture: Wul­lie Marr.

Pupils and staff of Cair­ney­hill Pri­mary School were back on their home ter­ri­tory for the first day back af­ter the Easter hol­i­day, fol­low­ing the fire at their school, be­low.